Hey guys, I just wanted to get confirmation of a claim made by someone I know. One of my SAT teachers, who is actually a Rice Univ. alumn and now also an Admissions officer, told me that Verbal/Writing scores in SAT are worth more than the math in the admissions process since more people usually do better in the latter. Is this true? Thanks in advance.
<p>Good GOD I hope so. Sucks to suck at math.</p>
<p>Since more people tend to do better in the Math section...CR and W would be held to a higher standard.</p>
<p>Thank god I'm an English geek.</p>
<p>^ ditto =P</p>
<p>Really? More people do better in math?</p>
<p>That makes me happy, because math multiple choice hurts my brain.</p>
<p>Yeah, as strange as that fact seems to me. Look at any college guide, and you'll see that the ranges for Math and CR are HUGELY different.</p>
<p>The nat'l avg. for math is 518 and verbal 508.</p>
<p>The Verbal score is definitely valued higher that Math, especially for LACs where your writing/reading skills will be used alot more than your Math skills, but I wouldn't say that right now the writing score matters so much because its so new.</p>
<p>Yes, it is true.</p>
<p>A perfect Verbal is considered more impressive than a perfect Quantitative. (1) Easier to ace the math if you're a math whiz, than it is to ace the Verbal if you're a verbal whiz.
(2) Verbal tests the kind of conceptualizing you'll be asked to do in college more than the math section tests the kind of math you'll get in college.</p>
<p>Plus, colleges have too many science geeks and want more liberal arts and humanities people. Art is life, baby.</p>
<p>"Plus, colleges have too many science geeks and want more liberal arts and humanities people. Art is life, baby."</p>
<p>So do colleges give more weight to an 800 on US history SAT II(humanities) than to an 800 in chemistry (math/sciences)?</p>
<p>That suggests that everybody who is studying for SAT Physics should stop studying it and study for SAT Literature instead?</p>
<p>that is rediculous to me, why would looking at a verbal score closer then a math score show if ur good enough to be at their college. Ya idc, these "college types" may consider themselves intelligent, but i see no logic in that</p>
<p>Lol. My ACT math owns my verbal :(.</p>
<p>SAT II's don't count. It's just that people who apply to top schools tend to have higher math scores on the SAT I, so those who get high scores on the verbal sections are more wanted since they're more rare. If two applicants with EXACTLY the same stats except that one's math/cr/w were 800/750/800 whereas the other's was 750/800/800, the second one would get in.</p>
<p>However, since that's very rare, colleges like applicants who have solid scores in each section (700/700/700) more than lopsided ones (800/650/650) unless if they're applying as one of the hardcore math/science people. After all, all this wouldn't apply to MIT or Caltech.</p>
<p>Thnx for the input guys.</p>
<p>That's good for me theoneo, because I got a 740/740/740... hopefully I'll do well on my SAT IIs when I take them. Actually, it'd be pretty funny if I get 740s on all of them.</p>
<p>I think the Verbal score is more important, but the overall M+V is more important than the Writing becuause Writing is new and some colleges are skeptical (like Georgetown who only look at the M+V)</p>
<p>The premise doesn't make sense. If people score higher on the math, it doesn't mean that the verbal is more valued. It just means that statistically the math scores are higher than the verbal scores. That is why they provide percentile ranks for your scores.</p>
<p>The comment from your SAT teacher is part of the informal war between the "English types" and the "Technical types" where each side is trying to undervalue the other side. In "Acing the College Application" by Michele Hernandez, she flatly states that adcoms value the Verbal over the Math because of the amount of reading and writing that students at the Ivies have to do. </p>
<p>It depends on your major. If you declare English as a major, then Verbal is more important. If you declare engineering/science/math as your major, then Math is more important. Michele Hernandez is somewhat biased as most authors of college guides are because probably all of the authors were English majors. Applying to a school as an engineering major is different from what most people go thru. First, the adcoms are much less involved and the engineering faculty calls the shots (if you apply as a music major, the music department calls the shots). Second, the most important thing are the SAT I Math and the SAT II IC/IIC scores. Another difference as an engineer major is that freshman year is handled differently. For most majors, freshman year is a type of nurturing where the faculty tries to help the students. For engineers, everyone is taking a common curriculum and the faculty is trying to thin the herd by moving the less motivated people into other majors.</p>